Celebrate National Catfish Day Every June 25

• By NSC
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What’s your favorite seafood to eat and/or catch? If it’s catfish, you’ll want to celebrate on June 25: National Catfish Day.

Believe it or not, this is not another unofficial food holiday.

It’s an honest-to-goodness official national day … By proclamation of the president.

Yep, on June 25, 1987 President Ronald Reagan issued proclamation 5672 making June 25 National Catfish Day. Technically his proclamation only applied to that one day, June 25, 1987. So the celebrations since then are unofficial.

But if you’re a catfish lover you aren’t going to let that stop you! Are you?

You can read his Catfish Day proclamation here (PDF).

The official day wasn’t honoring just any catfish, though. Its specific purpose was to recognize “the value of farm-raised catfish,” which had recently been getting more popular in the United States.

Today the majority of catfish sold in the US is farm raised (called aquafarming).

 

Catfish Trivia

The traditional view of catfish is of an unclean bottom-feeder barely fit to eat. But that’s unfair. There’s more to catfish than their feeding habits. And farm-raised fish eat nutritious soybean and fish meals, corn, vitamins and minerals—from the surface, not the bottom.

In fact, farm-raised catfish is a delicious, low-calorie and economical source of protein and Vitamin D.

But the term “catfish” doesn’t refer to just one kind of fish. There are several different species of catfish. The ones we eat in the US are usually either channel catfish or blue catfish.

All the species of catfish share the feature that give them their name: long fleshy growths around their mouths (called barbels) that look a lot like a cat’s whiskers.

Did you know these other things about catfish?

• They are nocturnal
• Some are electric. Some of them can zap you with as much as 350 volts of electricity.
• See-through catfish are a real thing; they’re called glass catfish.
• Five states, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and Tennessee, have named the Channel catfish their official fish.

 

And finally, have you ever gone noodling? This is a fishing method where you put your bare hand inside a catfish hole to try to catch it. It’s illegal in some states.

Scroll down for some ideas on celebrating this delicious official (sort of ) holiday.

(No, in this case “official” doesn’t mean you get the day off … Sorry!)

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How to Celebrate National Catfish Day

Celebrate with catfish, of course!

If you fish,this day is the perfect time to see how many catfish you can catch. Make sure you have some good catfish bait! Don’t forget to check your supply of hooks, too.

The best part of catching it yourself is you’ll have fresh catfish to eat for dinner!

Speaking of catfish for dinner, no matter if you catch it yourself or fish it out of the seafood bin at the grocery store, prepare your favorite catfish recipe and enjoy.

Or try a new recipe. Maybe one of these:

• Easy Low-Fat Oven Fried Catfish
• Blackened Catfish
• Zesty Baked Catfish
• Cajun-Baked Catfish

 

If your kids won’t eat any fish that’s not a stick, try these catfish sticks.

In researching this day, we saw one suggestion to celebrate by dressing your fish up like a cat. We don’t really recommend this. ;)

If you’d like to learn more about fishing for catfish, try one of these books:

• Channel Catfish Fever: Handbook of Strategies, by Doug Stange
• Cracking the Channel Catfish Code, by Brad Durick

 

How are you celebrating National Catfish Day?

 

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